It has become pretty obvious by this point that David Barton simply does not care that various claims he makes as part of his standard presentation are demonstrably false; he will simply continue to repeat them as fact because they are useful in promoting his right-wing political agenda.

As we have noted five times already, Barton repeatedly insists that the Constitution is filled with multiple “direct quotations” out of the Bible, insisting that anyone who doesn’t see them is simply “biblically illiterate;” an assertion he made again while speaking at Fellowship Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan over the weekend:

And if you know the Bible and you know and read the Constitution, you will see Bible verses and Bible phrases all over the Constitution. It quotes Bible phrases everywhere. People today say ‘oh, it’s a godless Constitution, it’s a secular document.’ If somebody tells me it’s a secular document, I know that they’re biblically illiterate. They don’t recognize a Bible verse when they see one because the Constitution is loaded up with direct quotations out of the Bible.

Of course, the only person who is illiterate here is Barton himself, as he is apparently unable to comprehend what the phrase “direct quoation” since none of the evidence he provides represent, in any way, “direct quotations.”

But Barton wasn’t done spreading falsehoods in this presentation, as he also repeated the claim that the Supreme Court ended mandatory Bible reading in public schools because it was causing brain damage to students:

[In 1963] the Supreme Court said no more Bible in schools. Now why would they do that? We have 320 years, literally, of the Bible in school; the Supreme Court itself said this is without any historical precedent. There is no historical precedent in our history for not having the Bible in schools, but it’s time to take it out. Why would they take it out?

Well, the Court explained why they would take it out. As a matter of fact, they called on the testimony of a psychologist – they didn’t have any historical precedent, they didn’t have any legal precedent, but Dr. Solomon Grayzel told them what was going to happen if kids read the Bible in schools and they said ‘that’s what we thought.’ And so here’s the quote the Supreme Court pointed out in its decision on why we took the Bible out of schools; they said ‘if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and had been, psychologically harmful to the child.’

We’ve now discovered the Bible causes brain damage; we can’t let you kids suffer brain damage, we’ve got to stop the brain damage. That’s the reason given by the Supreme Court on why the Bible went out of schools; it was psychological harm to children.

As we pointed out before, if you actually read the ruling in the case, you will find that the Supreme Court did not cite this as the reason for ending mandatory Bible reading in schools, rather the Court was merely describing the road the case had taken through the court system, noting that Dr. Grayzel’s testimony had been heard during the initial trial.

Beyond that, Barton intentionally misrepresents the point of Grayzel’s testimony itself, which was to note that forced Bible reading from a Christian perspective in public schools was potentially damaging to Jewish students:

Expert testimony was introduced by both appellants and appellees at the first trial, which testimony was summarized by the trial court as follows:

Dr. Solomon Grayzel testified that there were marked differences between the Jewish Holy Scriptures and the Christian Holy Bible, the most obvious of which was the absence of the New Testament in the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Dr. Grayzel testified that portions of the New Testament were offensive to Jewish tradition, and that, from the standpoint of Jewish faith, the concept of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was “practically blasphemous.” He cited instances in the New Testament which, assertedly, were not only sectarian in nature but tended to bring the Jews into ridicule or scorn. Dr. Grayzel gave as his expert opinion that such material from the New Testament could be explained to Jewish children in such a way as to do no harm to them. But if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and, in his specific experience with children, Dr. Grayzel observed, had been, psychologically harmful to the child, and had caused a divisive force within the social media of the school.

In both of these cases, it has been demonstrated time and again that the claims Barton is making are irrefutably false, but he simply does not care and continues to repeat them as truth as he delivers his pseudo-historical presentations to conservative audiences all across the country.

Apparently, several years ago Barton and his family were driving to Florida when Jacobs received a dream from God ordering her to start praying that the wheels on the Barton’s van would not fall off. She immediately did so and when the Bartons arrived at their destination, she told them of her dream and David and Cindy’s husband Mike took the van to a local mechanic who told them that the bearings were completely worn away and “there is absolutely no reason why your wheel should not have come off the axle.”

As Cindy explained, “God had given a word for David” that he was going to use him to rewrite school curriculum standards throughout the nation, but “Satan was trying to resist him,” but her intercessory prayers prevented that from happening:

Barton, a Texas-based pseudo-historian who for years has made a living telling gullible Religious Right audiences that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation and church-state separation is a myth, has run into quite a streak of trouble lately.

The Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin was the guest on “WallBuilders Live” today for a discussion of the Pentagon’s recent decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat. Not surprisingly, Boykin opposes the idea, wondering why the Obama Administration would approve this change even as Congress was working to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, claiming “there is such an inconsistency here”:

The Congress, the Senate at least, passed the Violence Against Women Act which was designed to protect our women. Now it had some flaws in it, so we don’t support it … but it’s violence against women, protect our women.

Now with this decision by Leon Panetta and the President, what we’re doing is we’re saying ‘now you ladies, fix your bayonets, we’re going to send you right into hand-to-hand combat with these men that are physically more capable than you in most cases and they’re going to try to kill you.’ There is such an inconsistency here.

As we have said time and time again, David Barton’s books, DVDs, radio programs, and presentations are so riddled with misrepresentations that just about any factual claim he makes needs to be check for accuracy.

And Barton continued to demonstrate the need for such fact-checked when he recently delivered a presentation at Glen Medows Baptist Church where San Angelo, Texas where he made an utterly laughable claim about the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Abington Township v. Schempp which declared that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.

In Barton’s telling, the Court struck down the practice because reading the Bible was going to give students brain damage:

The Supreme Court, when it took the Bible out of public schools, said that this is without precedent; there is no precedent in our history for taking the Bible out of schools but this is the time to do it.

Now, if there is no historical precedent, why would they say the Bible has to go out of schools? I mean, everything we have in history says just the opposite, so why? They quoted Dr. Solomon Grayzel on the reason that we need to get the Bible out of schools … In the Supreme Court decision, this is what the Court said why the Bible has to come out of schools; the Court says this:

If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and had been, psychologically harmful to the child.

Time out. Let me see if I get this: if we keep reading the Bible in schools, our kids are going to suffer from brain damage? Yeah, that was the reason given by the Court for the removal of the Bible out of the classroom back in 62-63.

Of course, if you actually read the ruling in the case, you will find that this citation of Dr. Grayzel appeared at the beginning of the decision when the Supreme Court was merely describing the road the case had taken through the court system, noting that Grayzel’s testimony had been heard during the initial trial.

On top of that, Barton also utterly misrepresented the point of Grayzel’s testimony, which was to note that forced Bible reading from a Christian perspective in public schools was potentially damaging to Jewish students:

Expert testimony was introduced by both appellants and appellees at the first trial, which testimony was summarized by the trial court as follows:

Dr. Solomon Grayzel testified that there were marked differences between the Jewish Holy Scriptures and the Christian Holy Bible, the most obvious of which was the absence of the New Testament in the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Dr. Grayzel testified that portions of the New Testament were offensive to Jewish tradition, and that, from the standpoint of Jewish faith, the concept of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was “practically blasphemous.” He cited instances in the New Testament which, assertedly, were not only sectarian in nature but tended to bring the Jews into ridicule or scorn. Dr. Grayzel gave as his expert opinion that such material from the New Testament could be explained to Jewish children in such a way as to do no harm to them. But if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and, in his specific experience with children, Dr. Grayzel observed, had been, psychologically harmful to the child, and had caused a divisive force within the social media of the school.

Just about everything in Barton’s explanation of this court decision is fundamentally misleading and demonstrably false … and yet it will continue to make no difference to those on the Right who regularly cite him as an expert historian.

Texas Governor Rick Perry stopped by “WallBuilders Live” today to voice his opposition to the upcoming vote by the Boy Scouts of America on possibly ending the organization’s ban on gay scouts and scout leaders. Perry, the author of the book “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For,” was predictably opposed to any such change, calling on the organization not to “break the hearts” of those who love it by caving to the “cruel intolerance” of the left:

What this gets down to Rick is that scouting is not about sex, it’s about building character. And the Boy Scouts is not the proper intersection for a debate over sexual preference. It is with this very aggressive, almost cruel intolerance by the far left that is making it so. So I really urge the Boy Scouts of America leadership not to succumb to this and I happen to believe that it is every scout’s, and certainly my Eagle Scout duty to speak out before scouting breaks the hearts of so many who love it.

Those just very, very aggressive, intolerant individuals on the left are what is driving this agenda and the Boy Scout leadership, I hope, will really listen and think about what the long-term impact of this is going to be.

This is about popular culture shifting in America. The values that the Boy Scouts are based upon are not values that shift … and Americans will be ill-served when one of the great institutions that it has in this country starts following pop culture rather than the clear, strong values that have served this country for over a century in the Boy Scouts.

February is Black History Month and WallBuilders is encouraging everyone to celebrate it buy purchasing a copy of David Barton’s absurdly biased DVD “”Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White”:

We’d encourage everyone to save their money and just read the report we wrote several years ago, exposing how Barton’s DVD systematically blames the Democratic Party for everything from slavery to Jim Crow:

Though the program is billed as an attempt to recognize “the forgotten heroes and untold stories from our rich African American political history,” it is, in reality, a 90-minute effort to portray the Democratic Party as responsible for every problem that has ever plagued the African American community in America and imply that the Republican Party is the antidote. Barton’s website proudly claims that he “is currently breaking ground in the African-American community with his presentations” based on this DVD.

Throughout the program, Barton presents a staggeringly slanted, openly partisan, and tellingly incomplete view of American history. Barton focuses on the Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery and Jim Crow, but completely ignores the transformation of American politics brought about by the civil rights movement. Barton, of course, never mentions that the rise of the modern Republican Party was built on a “southern strategy” of embracing and exploiting the resentments of racist southern Democrats who joined the Republican Party after Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed and signed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation.

We even grabbed a few choice video clips from the DVD itself highlighting the way in which Barton links the Democratic Party to the Ku Klux Klan and asserts that Democrats supported slavery just as they support abortion today:

David Barton returned to Glenn Beck’s television program last night for a program focusing on the history and use of presidential executive orders. During the course of the discussion, Beck asked Barton if he had seen the movie “Lincoln,” with Barton admitting that he hadn’t because there was too much profanity … but that didn’t stop him from claiming that the film was totally inaccurate because there was no need for any “wheeling and dealing” or back room deals in order to secure passage of the 13th Amendment because “it was slam dunk, big time” and passed easily without any real opposition, which prompted Beck to declare that he now wished he could “unsee” the movie:

Apparently Barton doesn’t realize that constitutional amendments have to be passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, so the 119 to 56 vote in the House that the movie chronicles was anything but a big time “slam dunk.”

Rabbi Daniel Lapin was the guest on “WallBuilders Live” today where he discussed “the health benefits of attending synagogues and churches.” During the conversation with co-host Rick Green, Lapin made the case that God designed people to interact and thus social connections were integral to good health, which is why people ought to regularly attend religious services.

That prompted Green to complain that under President Obama’s “socialized medicine,” states where people frequently attend church and are therefore healthier will end up having to “foot the bill” for all the states where people don’t attend church.

That observation struck Lapin as quite insightful, who then offered his own bizarre theory that people who don’t have children are “anti-social” because they are forcing other people’s children to take care of them:

Green: If you are in a society and culture that has that connection and that places a high value on religion and affiliation there and you get the better health that results, it looks like now, the way that America is going with socialized medicine, those states that are like that are going to end up footing the bill for the states that choose the other path, which is less connection and less affiliation with religion and those things because they are going to have a higher health bill. But now, with socialized medicine, we’ll pay for it.

Lapin: Oh, absolutely. And by the way, that is also true of Social Security. It’s all very well people choose not to have children; not only do they pay a health penalty for that but the truth is that your children and mine are going to have to pay for them. People say “it’s not true, I have my investments to take care of me, I don’t need children.” Well, that may be true, however your investments depend on a growing market of customers because your investments are in company and what characterizes a profitable company is that it has customers; it’s customer are my children.

Green: Yeah, that’s a good point, I hadn’t even thought about that. If you don’t have children, first of all, they are not contributing to the overall marketplace but also the tax base and everything else.

Lapin: That is exactly right. So I really do think that a claim of anti-social behavior can be lodged at the door of people who choose not to have children.

Shortly after the Sandy Hook tragedy, David Barton appeared on Glenn Beck’s television program where he made the case that the Second Amendment was intended to guarantee to citizens access to any and all weapons that might possibly be used against them in the name of self-defense. And since citizens might have to defend themselves from the government, they were entitled to own the same types of weapons that the government possesses.

Under Barton’s logic, the Second Amendment therefore guarantees to citizens the right to own tanks and bombers and attack helicopters and destroyers and even nuclear bombs because that is what the government owns.

But that seems crazy and he couldn’t possibly mean that, right?

Wrong. That is exactly what he means because he made the same point today on “WallBuilders Live”:

The Second Amendment is not to arm you less than it is to arm the government. Because what specifically happened was if the Americans had not been able to go home and grab their guns off the mantel over the fireplace, they could not have taken on the British coming after them.

The British was their government and the Americans had to have equal firepower with whoever was coming after them and that’s why they went to Fort Ticonderoga and got all the British cannons and came back and used those. That was just individual citizens doing that.

So the purpose of the Second Amendment was you have got to be able to defend yourself, your rights, period against anybody and that sometimes means it may be your government coming after you. So if the government has got AR-15s, guess what? The people can have AR-15s … Whatever the government’s got, you’ve got to be able to defend yourself against. So there was no limitation on what you could or couldn’t do with the Second Amendment; it was a self-defense amendment and if everybody is coming at you AR-15s, you don’t defend yourself with BB guns, you get AR-15s.